If our accounts do not fail, tonight at 23:30 an Oculus conference is broadcast live from SXSW in which some of the best-known members such as Palmer Luckey and Brendan Iribe take part.
The conference is titled “Explore the future of virtual reality with Oculus”, and will focus on Oculus Rift, Gear VR and the future of virtual reality. The achievements of the last year at Oculus, the general situation of virtual reality in the industry and the developments that most excite the speakers will be discussed. Then there will be a round of questions from the public, from Twitter and from Reddit.
Presenter:
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Nate Mitchell, VP of Product, Oculus VR
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Palmer Luckey, founder, Oculus VR
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Paul Bettner, CEO & Founder, Playful Corp
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Ryan Brown, hardware engineer, Oculus VR
The truth is that we don’t really know what to expect from this event, given that last week they didn’t say anything new during the GDC. The presentation of HTC Vive and the evolution of Morpheus, both with fairly clear technical specifications and a more or less concrete launch date, leaves Oculus in a somewhat delicate situation for virtual reality fans, especially those who have followed its evolution from the beginning.
Many questions arise, and we are not only talking about the date or launch characteristics of the CV1, but also about a hypothetical control method for it. Could Oculus use Lighthouse? Its relationship with Valve is not what it was a year ago, but it does not seem far-fetched to think that the Rift can work within the Steam ecosystem and that it takes advantage of Valve’s controllers. As has been commented these days on various sites, an imperfect input method is better than no method at all. And maybe Lighthouse is not perfect, but it has garnered a lot of praise during the past GDC. Nor can we forget that the SteamVR and OpenVR APIs are still an equivalent to DirectX for virtual reality, and will be compatible with devices from different manufacturers. We will see if any questions are cleared up tonight, but without a doubt Oculus is aware that many are watching them with a much more inquisitive look than just 10 days ago.
